Insights into the art of negotiation

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Machiavelli's Workshop, online training for budding negotiators,
opened its doors last week, after graduating from the Federal
Government's Building on IT Strengths (BITS) program. The system
combines a web application with email and uses a "scenario
generation engine", which breaks negotiations down into their
component pieces for the low-cost development of new training
courses.

"It allows us to build scenarios very quickly," inventor and
managing director Scott Chamberlain says. "We can build scenarios
without additional programming. That is what makes it so quick. I'm
not a programmer."

Chamberlain is a commercial lawyer who taught negotiation skills
at the Australian National University in Canberra. The new online
paradigm came to him as he became aware of the limitations of
traditional training methods. So two years ago, he sold his
law-firm partnership to devote himself to building Machiavelli's
Workshop. But does society need more lawyer-driven Machiavellian
business practices?

"It's very important for law students," Chamberlain says.
"Because of their role, they instantly become pompous, and going
through their feedback, they realise what has happened to them.
That's what happened to me the first time I used it."

The workshop's method for moderating the use of power is for an
anonymous online persona to be assigned to each student. This isn't
a "character" in the role-play sense but a record of what other
people think of you as you negotiate with them. This provides
valuable feedback as they progress from game to game - and the
ability for other students to see the reputation of a player before
they negotiate with them.

"At the end of the scenario, there's a feedback sheet about what
the student could have done," Chamberlain says. "Then you can go
into the chat room and email and see what people said behind your
back. And then there is statistical feedback about how well you've
done against everyone else who has played your side of the
negotiation. At the end of the game, you rate other players."

Chamberlain describes this as a powerful reinforcement tool
where some beta testers at the ANU's legal workshop for industrial
employment law found, to their discomfort, others saw them as
"untrustworthy".

"They have gone back through the record to see why," Chamberlain
says. "Because it's all online, people can run a matter to its
conclusion. And people are jealous of their own online
persona."

The need to maintain one's reputation, which continues into the
next negotiation, makes Machiavelli's Workshop not so Machiavellian
after all. This is despite the apparent contradiction on the
website explaining that power itself is not bad but neutral, while
claiming negotiating power allows you to get what you want.

But Malcolm Campbell, one of the start-up's directors with a
background in engineering and banking, believes making the course
available online could help balance the often-disproportionate
bargaining power between parties in real-life negotiations.

"I think about it like how Virgin Blue entered the airline
market," Campbell says. "More people are able to travel, and more
people will be able to negotiate as we democratise the market. It
will spread the secrets to a much greater audience. If we can do a
little bit to level the playing field, we will be delighted."

At conventional negotiation training, a gathering of employees
are given some theory in the morning, role play in the afternoon
and a video tape for evaluation.

At $30,000 for 15 people for two days, Campbell describes this
as an expensive "one-off experience with no reinforcement".

"We make a significant difference to these three problems and
make it available to a much wider group of staff members."